Golly! Some people are excited about being able to take advantage of Apple’s “generous” offer of cheap batteries for earlier-model iPhones. Give me a break. Apple deliberately ripped you off by slowing down out-of-date iPhones. It’s time to stop drinking Cupertino’s Kool-Aid and see Apple for what it really is: rotten.

Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices. Lithium-ion batteries become less capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold conditions, have a low battery charge as they age over time, which can result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components.

Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions. We’ve now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future.

Thanks. I need features like this like I need a hole in my head.

If an iPhone is shutting down because the battery isn’t 100%, how about, oh, I don’t know, telling us that! You know, with an alert like “Your battery needs replacing.”

Instead, all Joe and Jane User knew was that their iPhones were slowing down. “Oh, what to do! I know! Buy a new iPhone!”

Apple claimed in its “apology” for its battery software update that “we have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades.”

Yeah. Right. So why did Apple deliver this “feature” in such an underhanded way?

Computerworld’s Evan Schuman, a longtime Apple fan, analyzed Apple’s “apology” for its battery shenanigans in great detail and found it sorely lacking. Apple’s offering a cheaper battery replacement doesn’t cut it for him. Instead, “How about offering a free battery for those impacted? How about changing the warranty terms to support it for five years? How about using much longer-lasting batteries?” Darn good questions!

Some of my friends in the business think this revelation will finally wake Apple customers up and they’ll stop buying iPhones like lemmings every time a new one arrives. Some point to the class-action lawsuits coming Apple’s way.

I think Apple’s fanatic fans will put up with at least one more massive screw-up before they give up on the brand. That may be remarkably foolish of me, but then I don’t pay a grand for a smartphone either.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has been writing about technology and the business of technology since CP/M-80 was the cutting-edge PC operating system, 300bps was a fast Internet connection, WordStar was the state-of-the-art word processor, and we liked it!